Baroness Randerson: Reinvigorate buses urgently

Liberal Democrat transport spokesperson Baroness Randerson has written an opinion piece for the website PoliticsHome.com in which she argues that the bus network needs to be ‘urgently’ reinvigorated

She calls on buses to be ‘modernised, to be environmentally friendly, passenger friendly and fully integrated with other forms of transport’.

Citing recent figures that demonstrate over 3,300 supported bus services have been withdrawn across England and Wales since 2010 and that 65% of local authorities no longer provide free transport for 16-18 year olds,

Baroness Randerson says that this decline is contributing to ‘disconnected communities’. ‘Many rural areas have no bus services at all so those communities wither and die,’ she says.

Bus passengers tend to be from the groups most in need of support- the young, older people and the poorest, so they are the hardest hit by cuts. Baroness Randerson calls for a National Bus Strategy with two priorities: zero emissions and reduced fares.